


Funeral Thoughts

by Blackened_Wings



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Funeral, Mild Spoilers, Potential death, Thinking, end of game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 01:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10547864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackened_Wings/pseuds/Blackened_Wings
Summary: Sara thinks about what it would mean if she couldn't save her brother's life. Just a short one shot, because I freaking love this game.





	

When Sara Ryder heard about her brother's impending death, at first she was just scared of losing the last family she had left. But as time went on, as she made her way through the waves of enemies and to the computer that would both save her brother's life and ruin her own, she started to think about how she could possibly bury him.

She'd been to her father's grave, a small affair on Eos. Simple stone, simple flowers, simple everything. It was clean and precise, just as he would have wanted. She had no doubt the funeral had been the same. It had been planned by others, though, colleagues. After all, she'd been in a coma and her brother had barely been holding on to life himself. Neither of them had been forced to deal with the preparations or the decisions, which was probably for the best. While he'd been their father, they'd never been all that close, and even still it would have been hard.

But she and her brother were different. They were twins, they'd been together since conception. They knew each other on a deeper level than anyone else did. He was a part of her, in much the same way that she was a part of him. They had spent so much time together, had secrets with each other that they would never tell anyone else. They'd been the only family when their mother had passed and Alex Ryder had buried himself in other things, to forget. He was most of her world. So how could she manage to pick out something for him?

And besides, she knew what military standard was. She knew that the people around them would want to bury him like a soldier, but that just wasn't him. He was a soldier, of course, had the training and the ability to follow orders. But that brushed aside the sarcastic, joking side of him, the warm and caring side. He could be logical, but rarely did he follow only his head when he made decisions. How could she translate a typical military burial into something that truly represented who he was as a person?

Honestly, she couldn't even be sure she'd be able to function properly if he died. It was one thing, knowing he was out of reach on dangerous, life-threatening missions and explorations. But knowing the opposite was true, that he just didn't exist anywhere in the known universe anymore? That might be unlivable.

Not that it probably mattered. As she understood it, as soon as she saved his life, hers would essentially be forfeit. Even if she didn't manage to get to him, she knew they were looking for her, and there were only so many places to hide in space. She wouldn't live long without him, in either case. And if she did save him, he would come charging in to save her, because that's what they did. Who knew if he would live through that.

But as long as she didn't have to bury him, she could manage. She just didn't want to pick out his headstone.

With that in mind, she found her way to the console that would save him, according to SAM. And without hesitation, she did what she had to do. Because damn everything, she wasn't going to pick out his headstone. He could be spaced, for all she cared, because she wasn't going to outlive him this time.

 


End file.
